Indian Cricket

I ended up watching a cricket match after a long gap. I stayed up all night to watch the 6th one-dayer between India and Australia. My first observation was that the pace of the game had gotten much faster. Bowlers took less time between balls, and the teams in general took less time between overs. I had expected the opposite, given the ever-increasing need for TV commercials between the overs.

I fail to understand what the veterans are still doing in the team. Of course, there were a few dropped catches which made the difference in the end result. But I felt India still had a good chance to chase down the total. Saurav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid seemed to play as if we needed to retain wickets till the 50th over, and get all the needed runs in one over. And Ganguly, of course, is the ultimate expert at converting two's to a single! I felt really bad for the kids, as they had to endure a loss in spite of fighting hard. It was really refreshing to see Uthappa and Dhoni play their hearts out trying to compensate for the way oldies played. I sincerely hope Dhoni develops the guts someday to tell these old players that their shelf life is over and that they are being dropped!